


Tiny Drops of Rain

by speakingwosound (sev313)



Series: The Greatest Show on Earth [1]
Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Circus, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Blind Character, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Period-typical depiction of a marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:20:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21852385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sev313/pseuds/speakingwosound
Summary: Tanya still doesn't know if she should be grateful for it or not, but tomorrow is her wedding day.
Relationships: Emily Black Favreau/Tanya Somanader, Emily/Tommy/Lovett/Dan/Alyssa/Elijah/Michael/Priyanka
Series: The Greatest Show on Earth [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1588606
Comments: 3
Kudos: 16
Collections: Crooked Secret Santa 2019





	Tiny Drops of Rain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LilyRosePotter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilyRosePotter/gifts).

> Title comes from The Highwomen.
> 
> Pinch hit for LilyRosePotter for Crooked Secret Santa 2019 - this was a blast to write for you and I hope you enjoy the little slice of this world as much as I enjoyed writing it!

**Ohio, 1926**

“He’s a good match,” Adit offers for the twelfth time that afternoon. Tanya’s been counting.

She reaches out, patting his wrist gently. She can feel the undercurrent of his anxiety even through her thick leather gloves. An engagement present from Mr. Patel, the nice young doctor who’d arrived in town six months ago to the day. Tanya still doesn’t know whether she should be grateful or not for whatever instinct led her mother to his doorstep with a welcoming plate of cookies and a heavy dollop of gossip that second morning, Tanya towed unwillingly in her wake. 

Either way, she’s resigned to what came next. A relatively long courtship, elongated mostly to convince her father who, in the end, needed little convincing. His eldest daughter was getting old, older than is proper in the new world or the old. His eldest daughter who needed extra attention. His eldest daughter who came with a pittance of a dowry and a fiery spirit that had scared off even those suitors who could look past the milkiness of her eyes and her uncanny ability to know where things are, anyway.

Mr. Patel had looked past her eyes, though. Past the pies she cannot bake without burning and past the pamphlet on the ERA she’d displayed prominently on her desk the first and last time he’d been in her bedroom. A test or a cry for help, she’s honestly still not sure. But he had simply picked it up, read it briefly before handing her a long, skinny box with a shy, “I noticed that those are a little worse for wear,” and a nod to her daily leather gloves.

Tanya had fingered the hole between her thumb and forefinger, the hole she’d laundered at least a dozen times as she had accepted the gift. “Thank you, this is incredibly thoughtful.”

He had nodded, and then stumbled over, “my apologies, you can’t see my nod. I am pleased that you like them. It bodes well for my next proposal because, if I have your permission, I’d like to ask your father for your hand in marriage.”

Tanya still doesn’t know if her gasp had been out of relief or surprise or just because that’s what she’d always been told she should do when a nice young man with a good job and a respectable family and homely enough looks asked her to marry him. She doesn’t know why she hadn’t just said _it would be my pleasure_, either, but instead had nodded towards the pamphlet still in his hands. “Aren’t you going to ask about that?”

“I like a well-read woman,” he’d said, his voice still a little shaky and his fingers crinkling around the pamphlet audibly. “I always need help in surgery.”

Tanya had frowned and amended, “aren’t you at least going to ask me how I can read it?”

She hadn’t been able to see the way his eyes had caught hers, but she can still feel the way his gaze burned through her as his voice had evened out, “there are more ways to see than with one’s eyes.”

Now, Tanya fingers the pamphlet folded carefully in her pocket and pastes on her best smile, following her brother’s body heat to look directly in his direction. “Mr. Patel is a good man, I’m lucky to have found him. Papa is relieved.”

Adit turns his hand over to squeeze her fingers. “We’re all relieved, T. Mama was worried you were going to live out your days darning socks.”

_And my nights at National Women’s Movement meetings_, she thinks. “I’m still going to live out my days darning socks,” she shrugs. “They’ll just be Mr. Patel’s socks now instead of Papa’s.”

She can feel Adit’s laughter through their clasped hands. “The lesser of two evils. I’m going to get another round, do you want anything?”

Tanya shakes her head, already sliding out from Adit’s hand and the cramped speakeasy bench. It’s a risk, spending her last afternoon of maiden-hood in an underground speakeasy, but Adit had promised complete safety and Tanya likes the bustle and noise of the place. “I’ll get it.”

“Tanya-“

“I’ll get it,” she repeats. Her back is sore from her morning at the salon and her legs are cramped under her best skirts, cleaned and darned for exactly this occasion. To see and be seen, metaphorically, on the day before a wedding her neighbors had whispered would never happen since the moment she was born without any kind of sight that they can understand.

Tanya stretches as she heads to the bar, careful to step around the hands people hold out to grasp her with and step over the feet held out to trip her. The body of this dress fit four years and dozens of pies ago, the last occasion she’d had to dress in her finery for her cousin’s wedding. Her _younger_ cousin’s wedding, her relatives had been sure to remind her of. She’d had to side step men’s hands then, too.

“You look awfully miserable,” a voice interrupts her self-pitying. It’s sharp, not as much stern as it is self-aware and centered, like the speaker knows exactly who she is and is exactly where she needs to be. Tanya’s never known either of those things. Tanya is who she needs to be when she needs to be. The obedient daughter. The supportive sister. The devoted fiancé.

Tanya feels the edge of the bar against her chest and leans forward, towards that voice, her fingers itching to be free of her leather gloves for the first time in years, something about this woman and her voice calling Tanya forward. “I’m getting married tomorrow.”

“Well,” the woman laughs. Tanya hears the faint splash of liquid over a glass, and then the woman’s fingers are around hers, pushing a small glass into her hand. “That is a cause for the long face, then.”

Tanya forces herself to frown and say, “it’s a happy occasion,” with as level a tone as she can.

“Sure it is.” The woman’s voice is just as level, but Tanya gets a rush of amusement and skepticism and curiosity through the thick layer of her gloves. “Something to drink to, at least.”

“I’m not-“ Tanya tries. “I’m here with my brother.”

“All the more reason.” The woman holds up her glass. “Besides, it’s rude to refuse a drink. Mazel Tov.”

Tanya hears a glass clink against hers and she lifts her own, shivering as she swallows something barely better than grain alcohol. She coughs into her wrist as she slides her glass back to the counter. “It isn’t rude to refuse a drink when the giver is trying poison you.”

“If I was trying to poison you, you’d know it.”

“That isn’t comforting.”

“Wasn’t meant to be. I’m Emily, by the way.”

Tanya rolls Emily’s name over her tongue a few times. She wishes she could trace Emily’s face, to see her in the only way Tanya knows how. “I’m Tanya.”

“I know.” Emily’s voice drops and Tanya can feel the heat of her breath as she bends close to Tanya’s ear. “You have a gift, Tanya. We’ve been waiting for you for a long time.”

Tanya’s interest freezes instantly into fear and Tanya rears back, nearly stumbling to the floor as her uncomfortable, unscuffed shoes catch on the stools to her left and right. Strong arms grab her before she can fall, though, and her whole body stiffens and shudders before she feels the familiar pulse of Adit’s thoughts through his hands and the cotton of her dress.

“Careful,” Adit says, his frown obvious through his tone and the disapproval in his fingertips. “Perhaps we’ve been in this speakeasy a bit too long. Mama will have my head if I return you in anything but perfect shape.”

Tanya nods, quickly. “If we leave now we’ll be home just in time for afternoon tea.”

Adit nods, stepping away from her and offering his elbow. Tanya takes it, only glancing back when Emily clears her throat and says, evenly and louder than necessary, “if you’re looking for a honeymoon activity, I’m with the Batty Brothers circus. We’re doing two shows a day until Monday, on the fairgrounds just north of town. Come by anytime. Give my name at the front gates and there will be a ticket waiting.”

Adit wraps his fingers around Tanya’s where they’re curled on his arm. “Tanya?”

Tanya shakes herself and takes a step towards him. “Yeah, let’s not keep Mama waiting.”

***

Tanya can feel the light of the moon on her cheeks. 

She can hear the creaks of the old house as it groans and settles around her invading presence, at once so foreign and so familiar that her chest aches. 

She’s free, for the first time in her life out from under her father's watchful eye and her mother's crushing worry. Freedom, she'd never understood until now, can be just as suffocating as captivity.

She hadn't had time between the ceremony and the reception to learn her new home before Mr. Patel had taken her hand and led her up a winding staircase to their marriage bed. He’d been thrumming with anxiety and excitement, too fast for her to keep up. She can feel a bruise on her calf, from a sewing machine or a stack of magazines or something else sharp and high on a step she hadn't known to skip, burning as he presses his thumb to the center of it.

"You're beautiful," he whispers. To the night. To her. To the bruise.

His clothes rustle - the snap of pressed cotton from his wedding suit, the clank of buttons, the whoosh of his pleated pants sliding down his legs - and then he's standing at the foot of the bed, all body heat and smooth skin. In his nudity he is a stranger to her again, as unfamiliar as this old house, as unfamiliar as this new life she's stepped into.

He doesn't turn on a lamp and she squeezes her eyes shut for him. She's pretty sure he'd want her either way, but her mother's always told her to leave nothing up to chance. Nothing she wants anyway, and she does want this. If not so much to darn his socks and bear his children, then to prove to herself and her parents and her brother that she can provide for them and for her. The joy of a new challenge is just a bonus, but the utter relief of breaking the monotony of her life, even if only to step into the monotony of a new one, is so thick she can hardly breathe through it.

"You're beautiful," he repeats. 

The bed dips. His hand is on her inner thigh, soothing and warm as he pulls her open, rising higher and higher and higher and she doesn’t have much time to worry before he’s in her, her body meeting his thrust with a distant pinch not worthy of a scream. She wonders if she should, anyway. She wonders if he wants her to. She wonders if his grunts, a working man’s grunts, are something she should be reciprocating. She wonders if they’re a good sign. She hopes they are.

Part of her wishes that she'd removed her gloves when she'd removed the rest of her. But those were just clothes and her gloves are _her_, and as his grunts slip into a string of groans and squeals, as his sweat drops from the tip of his nose to the center of her chest, as his hips scrape against the insides of her thighs, as her entire world narrows to _him_, she doesn't need or want the extra layer of skin between them. This is enough. This is more than enough. She even feels a moment of pleasure, a jolt between her legs that she tries to chase, but it's over too quickly.

In the end it’s anticlimactic. One moment he’s thrusting, his arms and thighs clenching and his throat working through a guttural sound. The next he's holding himself over her, his arms shaking and his breath coming in short, physical pants, his hips stilling between hers.

"Thank you," he murmurs, breathless, and falls to her side. There's inches between them, cool sheets and warm air and Tanya feels bereft at the loss of contact. She squeezes her legs together, reaching for the thin top sheet kicked to the end of the bed. Only after his breathing evens and slows beside her does she dare to open her eyes.

Her eyelids ache as she blinks them open, stretching them over her milky, unseeing eyes. She feels suddenly very alone, her senses flooded with the strangeness of the mattress under her and the wind rustling down the staircase she doesn’t know how to traverse on her own and the sound of his breathing, too close and yet much too far away.

She rolls to her side, her thighs aching, and strips her left glove off. He’s never asked this of her and he’s never offered it either, but they were married that afternoon and he’s lying naked beside her. She owes him the courtesy of doing the same and he owes her this comfort. He promised it, even, in his vows. _To have and to hold_.

He’ll be the fifth person she’s touched with her bare fingers. The first were her parents, their minds so familiar to her from the first touch that she thought all children knew their parents so fully. The third was Adit, almost as familiar and just as protective, if not always as indulgent as their parents. The fourth was Sarah Werner, her first grade classmate who cried and cried and cried when Tanya had touched her wrist, shivered at the images she saw there, and had asked why her father hit her. Tanya’s mother had picked her up early from school that day, and their impromptu afternoon at Macy’s drinking tea, eating biscuits, and picking out a pair of small leather gloves had felt so much like a treat rather than a punishment that Tanya had never guessed it.

Tanya’s hand shakes as she closes the space between them. Mr. Patel’s wrists are folded on his chest, thin and delicate, and Tanya dangles her bare fingers gently over his, tracing his larger ones, darker and stronger and filled with the life of a doctor. She smiles as she’s hit with warmth, a layer of exhaustion and contentment and satiation so thick that it takes a moment to penetrate.

And then she wishes she hadn’t.

It takes a moment to make sense of the images. A surgical chair, with a series of bright imposing lights overhead and thick restraints at the ankles and wrists. A table, littered with tools ranging from precise tweezers to a bone saw. Tanya, herself, staring unblinkingly at the far wall, her eyes held open by four painful-looking clamps. Mr. Patel bending over her, thrumming not with worry for her safety but with a bone-deep fascination, dreams of scientific advancement and a monetary windfall flooding his greed as he leans over her.

This is what he’s dreaming about, mere moments after their marriage was consummated. This is the future he has planned for them. 

Tanya should have known. Tanya knows better than to not have guessed.

She pulls back, tripping over the sheet she’d pulled over her waist and catching on the lumps in the mattress she hasn’t yet memorized. The bed creaks and groans and she freezes, catching her breath until her head is light and she’s absolutely sure that her new husband-turned-monster is still snoring beside her.

She’s grateful for her mother’s lessons on tidiness as she finds her discarded pile of clothes quickly and pulls them on. She wishes she hadn’t been wearing her wedding finery when she’d undressed, but there’s no time to waste hunting for the closet Mr. Patel promised is hers, so she pulls on her underthings and climbs into her dress, doing the back laces as best she can without the help of her mother and aunts. She doesn’t, however, put on the foolish heels that clang against the wooden stairs and trip over every sliver and crack.

She looks back, once, to hear his breathing and feel the strangeness of the room that is now more sinister than unknown, and then she turns and runs, and doesn’t stop running.

***

Tanya doesn’t know how long she’s been running, but it’s early morning by the time she reaches the fairgrounds. She can feel the sun slowly rising over the bridge of her nose and can hear the soft sounds of horses and cows snuffling through their morning routines, mixed with deeper roars and cries of animals she’s never heard before. As she gets closer, the ground softens under her feet, mud from thousands of feet - young, old, and everybody in-between - charging towards the greatest show on earth two times a day for the past few days.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” a voice says, soft and low and so gentle that Tanya almost starts to cry. “You look in need of assistance.”

Tanya takes a deep breath, She only allows herself to regret her decision to come here long enough to remember the image of herself in that surgical chair, and says, “I’m looking for a woman named Emily. She didn’t give me a last name.”

The voice chuckles. “That sounds like Emily. I’m Elijah. If you want, I can take you to her? I promise I won’t hurt you.”

Tanya nods slowly, taking his arm with shaking fingers. Through the leather of her gloves she can feel his heartbeat, calm and steady and unwavering. “I’m Tanya.”

He nods, taking a step forward and waiting for her to match his stride. “Emily told me to watch for you.”

Tanya swallows. Her heart beats hard in her chest, warning her that she’s walking directly from one trap into a second with eyes no less open than they were at yesterday’s altar. “How did she know I’d come?”

Elijah chuckles, his breath warm against Tanya’s ear even as he keeps a careful distance. “She didn’t, she just likes to take credit for other people’s work.”

“What-?”

“You’ll meet everyone soon enough,” Elijah promises. “If you stay with us, that is, and I really hope that you do.”

“How can you say that?” Tanya can barely think as she counts his heartbeats, thumping in half-step to hers. “You don’t know me at all.”

“You’re one of us,” Elijah shrugs, touching her leathered hand gently. “That’s all I need to know.”

Tanya has a million questions, but before she can choose which one to ask first, Elijah pulls her to a stop in front of what feels and sounds like an old wooden structure. She can hear the sound of laughter from inside, men and women’s voices raised high and giddy, like they don’t have a care in the world. They sound so carefree that Tanya’s chest aches and, despite herself, she leans forward, towards the sound, towards a freedom that feels an awful lot less like suffocation than she’d thought it could the night before.

Elijah steps past her, his fist loud on the door. “Em? You have a visitor.”

“Oh!” She exclaims, her voice tinged with excitement, followed by lowered giggles and a murmured, “no, no, Tommy, hold that thought until _after _we’ve greeted our guest,” and then a wooden door is creaking open and she’s saying, much louder, “Tanya, you came.”

Tanya sways on her feet, bereft of Elijah’s hand on her elbow and a full night’s sleep. “Ahh, hi. I hope-“ She swallows. “I hope your invitation still stands.”

“Of course it does,” Emily clatters down the steps and skids to a stop in front of Tanya. She’s breathless, her cheeks heated with excitement and Tanya can almost imagine twin flushed circles high on her cheeks. “I was so afraid you wouldn’t come.”

Tanya’s heart beats wildly against her ribs, high in her throat, throbs in the ache between her legs. “I wasn’t going to.”

“I know.” Emily’s skirt rustles as she wipes her hand on the cotton and then holds it out. “You’re safe here. Touch me and be sure.”

Tanya hesitates. Five people, five people who let her touch them and then shied away, piled barriers between them like Tanya and her gift and her skin and her dead eyes were something to be hidden away until she believed that she, herself, wasn’t worth anything more.

“It’s okay,” Emily promises. “I won’t ever ask you to do something you can’t see first.”

Tanya reaches for the edge of her glove, peeling it off slowly. No one’s ever _asked _her to touch them before, no one’s ever promised her access to the only kind of sight she has, and her hands are shaking as she reaches out, pressing just the tip of her index finger to Emily’s wrist. She gets a flash of joy - a man with broad shoulders and a head of thinning blond hair and a friendly smile lying under a thin sheet on a lumpy mattress - before she pulls away quickly.

“That’s Tommy,” Emily explains, not moving her hand at all. “He’s an ass, but he’s harmless. You’ll meet him soon.”

Tanya nods, letting her feet take a small step forward as she presses her fingers more firmly to Emily’s wrist. The images come slowly at first, then snowball, rolling together until the joy is too big for Tanya to step back from and Tanya loses any intention of pulling her hand away.

Tommy and a man who must be Elijah, dancing under the Big Top long after the crowds have left for the night. There’s detritus everywhere, sticky cotton candy sticks and styrofoam cups of soda littering the benches and rhino - _rhino_, Tanya repeats to herself - dung lining the ring, but the Emily in the memory can’t bring herself to care as she leans against the shoulder of a shorter man, his curls falling across his forehead as he makes her laugh until she cries.

A woman grinning between Emily’s thighs, her hair thrown into a messy bun and her hands small on Emily’s knees, her tongue wet and warm and capable of things Tanya’s never even dreamed about. Tanya feels that pang of pleasure she’d felt the night before, only this time it’s elongated, dancing before her with possibility and hope and-

She gasps as Emily giggles, turning her hand over and twisting their fingers together as she throws them into another image. Not a memory this time, Tanya’s pretty sure, but a hope, a possible future. Emily’s in the ring again, only this time it’s full of cheering people and Emily’s standing thirty feet above them all on a small platform. Tanya feels a thrill of fear and excitement as she looks down at all their exciting, shining faces, like she’s taking her life into her own hands, like she’s building her life _with_ her own hands. Then Emily rises onto her toes, pushing off from the platform, and Tanya’s heart is in her own toes as Emily takes off, flying through the sky with nothing but a net twenty feet below to catch her, except-

Except no, that isn’t right. There’s another person flying towards Emily, with dark hair and long, strong fingers and milky unseeing eyes. She’s wearing a sequined leotard that hugs her curves and elongates her legs and she’s grinning, like being up here, like flying through the air with Emily, is all that matters in the world. As Tanya watches, this future image of herself catches Emily’s flying arms with grace and ease, swinging them both through the air like a dream.

Tanya pulls back, just a little, just enough to think freely. This image of the future contrasts so sharply with the possibilities Mr. Patel had offered her the night before that Tanya gasps, feeling a sob rise into her chest as she tips forward again, trusting Emily to catch her, now, just as surely as that future Emily trusts Tanya to catch her in free fall.

Emily presses her lips to Tanya’s head, her free hand strong on Tanya’s spine and her other still clasped in Tanya’s. “Welcome to the circus.”

Tanya chuckles through her tears, feeling the truth of it in her chest. “I’m happy to be here.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos much appreciated!


End file.
